


Expecting Too Much From the Wounded

by Bk_Betty



Series: Tumblr Ficlet Challenge [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, This is Two People Having a Painful Conversation, but it's worth it in the end, did I mention the angst?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 15:45:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13684755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bk_Betty/pseuds/Bk_Betty
Summary: Bucky has been doing better, going to therapy and working through all the shit Hydra did to him. The one thing therapy can't help is his relationship with Steve. They've been tiptoeing around each other for months, a weird dance of "everything's fine" and Steve treating him like a ticking time bomb. But tonight, they are pushed to their breaking point. And all the pain and anguish they've been choking down threatens to destroy them. If this relationship is going to survive, they need to absolve themselves of the crushing guilt they both carry.A painful conversation between our two super soldiers - just in time for Valentine's Day!





	Expecting Too Much From the Wounded

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first installment for the Tumblr Ficlet challenge started by [Bear_shark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bear_shark/pseuds/Bear_shark) and [Parrannnah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parrannnah/pseuds/Parrannnah). 
> 
> It was supposed to be a ficlet based on the prompt below. Somehow it morphed into 3000+ words of angst. I'm still not sure how that happened. 
> 
> Prompt - Hesitant kiss: The type of kiss where their lips touch a brush against each other’s a few times, breath fanning across each other’s faces as one waits for the other to make a move.

They were standing on opposite sides of the kitchen counter, both leaning against the cool granite for support. This was an ugly fight, one that brought to light hurts neither one knew were buried deep in their souls. Considering they’d been together since the 30s, it was a wonder they could hide such pain from each other. 

“It doesn’t matter that you don’t remember our goddamn double date with the Johnson sisters! It was a dumb memory and I don’t know why you’re so fucking upset about it,” Steve hissed into the suffocatingly quiet room. 

Bucky remained practically motionless, the rise and fall of his chest the only indication he was alive. He took in a ragged, tired breath before pushing away from the counter and standing up straight. 

“That’s not the fucking point I’m trying to make and you know it!” Bucky fumed. 

Steve was being deliberately obtuse and Bucky was done beating his head against a wall. He crossed his arms over his chest, a move that signaled he was shutting down. But Bucky should have known Steve wouldn’t let it go. He was going to keep digging and digging. And Bucky knew Steve wouldn’t like what he found. 

Steve stalked around the counter, invading Bucky’s personal space. It was something he knew Bucky hated these days - the feeling of being crowded and trapped with no means of a quick retreat. It was probably the worst thing Steve could do right now, but he obviously didn’t give a shit. 

“You don’t get to shut me out, Buck! Not this time,” he argued. 

Bucky used his metal arm to push at Steve’s chest. “Step off, Rogers! Don’t make me say something we’ll both regret later."

Steve threw his hands up, stepping back to give Bucky some space, but he wasn’t going to let Bucky off so easily. 

“Maybe I want you to say something we’ll regret - something real and honest and _you_! Maybe I’m fucking sick of you flying off the handle every time I bring up something from our past! Maybe I want the man I fucking _love_ to let me back in!”

By the end of his rant, Steve had Bucky trapped against their refrigerator. His sky blue eyes were begging Bucky not to shut him out. But Steve committed a horrible misstep by backing Bucky into a corner. Bucky’s eyes went hard at Steve’s words, his face a horrifying mix of hurt, anger and self-loathing. Steve, as always, didn’t know when to stop, and Bucky had reached his limit. 

“I’m NOT him anymore!” Bucky shouted, pushing Steve away. “You’re waiting around for someone who died decades ago! I’m not him, I will _never_ be him!”

He stormed into the living room, positioning himself as close to their front door as possible. Bucky could feel everything he’d bottled up bubbling just below the surface. One more slip, one more barbed comment and he was going to snap. He needed to be near an exit without telegraphing his desire to flee. 

“What the fuck does that mean?!” Steve threw back, stepping between Bucky and his only means of escape. Bucky really fucking hated that Steve still knew him so well. 

“I’m never going to be the Bucky you knew before the war,” he quietly seethed, turning his back on Steve. “Fuck, I wasn’t the same when you took me off that table and you knew it. But we pretended I was and look where that got us.”

“I don’t expect you to be the old Bucky. I’m not the same person either!” Steve shouted. Bucky whirled around at that, so angry he almost couldn’t see Steve in the soft light coming from their kitchen. 

“Yes, you are! You’ve seen war, you’ve felt so much pain but you never _caused_ it. You never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it. You never shot an innocent child because she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You didn’t have to wipe her blood off your face but I _did_.”

“Buck, that wasn’t you…”

“Yes, it WAS. That’s the problem, Steve. It fucking was! Those were my hands that pulled the trigger. It doesn’t matter how many times you or any fucking therapist tells me otherwise, it was still me. Nothing I do will ever wash that blood off my hands. So no, we haven’t changed in the same way.”

Bucky was on a roll. Steve wanted him to open up? Well, he would open the fuck up and unleash it all. 

“I spent most of my life killing mercilessly, without conscience or concern. That didn’t just roll off when the trigger words were taken out of my head. I can’t just pack those memories away because ‘It wasn’t you, Buck’. Because it fucking was and when I close my eyes and see MY hands soaked in blood, _I_ have to live with that. Not you.”

Bucky stopped short when he realized he was yelling. His breath was coming in short bursts and he felt like he was about to pass out. 

Steve’s face was an unnerving mask of horror, pain and yes, there was pity there too. Fuck. Bucky turned away just when Steve started to reach for him. He shook Steve’s hand from his shoulder and put more distance between them. 

Bucky hadn’t meant to be that brutal but he was glad it was out in the open. If he was being totally honest, he’d intentionally tossed out the disturbing details of killing a little girl. Steve had read his file, must have seen that children were among his kills. But reading it and hearing about it were two completely different things. And right now he wanted Steve to hear just what kind of monster he had been. 

He needed Steve to stop seeing his old Bucky and instead see the very damaged person standing in front of him now. Because that person was drowning under the weight of trying to live up to someone Steve remembered.

"Whether you mean to or not, your expectations are crushing me,” he whispered, not looking in Steve’s direction. “Every time you bring up an old story that I don’t remember, I feel your disappointment…” 

He heard Steve start to protest but shook his head.

“Shut up for a fucking minute and listen,” he snapped. 

Bucky could hear the audible click of Steve shutting his mouth firmly. He turned around, probably a bit sharper than he intended, and stalked towards Steve. 

“ I _feel_ it. You may not be doing it on purpose but that’s what you project. You want me to remember because I’m the only one who can. I’m the last link to your life before Captain America and every time I don’t remember something, it’s like a part of that past dies.”

Steve was vehemently shaking his head, mouth opening and closing as if trying to find the right words to deny what was being thrown at him. But Bucky couldn’t stop now that he found the courage to admit his truth. 

“And I’m sorry, Stevie. I’m so sorry I can’t be that person anymore. I know you’re happy any version of me is still standing, but I also know you miss that guy. You’ve known nothing but war and fighting and pain since you came out of that machine. But I was a part of a time before all that and sometimes you want to grab onto it so tight, even if for a moment. So you start telling me some story you think I should remember and I feel every. single. second of your disappointment when I don’t.”

Bucky’s heart felt like it was in a vice, being squeezed harder with every word that escaped. He stopped short, grabbing on to the back of the couch and taking a deep breath. He glanced up to find Steve standing on the other side, looking like he’d been punched in the gut. 

It hadn’t hit Bucky until it started falling out of his mouth, but Steve’s expectations of him weren’t just about Bucky. They were also about Steve’s own pain that he hadn’t dealt with yet. When Steve came out of the ice, he was grieving the “death” of the love of his life. Watching Bucky fall was fresh in his mind and he hadn’t dealt with it. Instead, he went headlong into a fight he hadn’t started. A fight he had no business being in so soon after waking up. And SHIELD didn’t give a shit about him. They just needed someone to fight their wars for them. 

Bucky knew for a fact that Sam had suggested counseling not long after the Triskelion fell. But as always, the self sacrificing idiot had put his pain on the backburner and started searching for Bucky. Even when Bucky called from a pay phone in the middle of god-knows-where Indiana and begged Steve to let him go, he had refused to stop. 

“You’re always telling me I need to keep my therapy appointments. You think maybe you should take your own advice?” Bucky asked, moving back to sit on a nearby stool. He didn’t take his eyes off Steve for a second, watching an interplay of emotions dance across his face. Bucky had hit too close to home and Steve wasn’t sure what to say. The silence stretched on for what seemed like hours but more than likely was only a few minutes. 

“I thought I was helping you,” Steve said, his voice both helpless and defensive. Rolling his eyes, Bucky let out a loud sigh and shook his head. 

“You still don’t get it, do you?” Bucky asked, this close to really losing it. 

Steve let out an almost vicious chuckle, leveling Bucky with a hard stare. 

“Clearly, I don’t. I’m too busy making everything worse in your life, so why don’t you enlighten me.”

And that… that was the last straw for Bucky. 

“FUCK.YOU! Seriously, fuck you and fuck this!” Bucky threw back, stalking forward, arms up and his flesh index finger pointing squarely at Steve. 

“Don’t ask me to open up to you and then get your star spangled tights in a bunch when you don’t like what I have to say. You can be a stubborn asshole when you really want to and god forbid someone point out the great Steve Rogers’ flaws. You are quick to push me towards therapy and working through my shit when you’re carrying around more issues than Time Magazine.”

“This isn’t about me, Buck,” Steve responded, just as forcefully.

“It is when your issues are fucking _suffocating_ me! You’re looking at me to remind you of the good you had before _you_ went and volunteered your dumb ass to be a science experiment. We don’t talk about everything that happened before you fucking crashed a goddamn plane into the ocean. You’re quick to talk about shit not being my fault and you’re real fucking quick to shut down any remorse I feel for the lives I ended.”

They were in each other’s faces now, the anger and pain radiating off them in waves. It was nasty and ruthless in a way only someone who loved you could achieve. 

“But the minute we talk about the shit you’re carrying, you get vicious fast,” Bucky accused, the levees breaking and long held hurts sweeping them into an unruly tidal wave. “Why don’t we talk about the fact that you basically committed suicide the minute I was gone? Huh? Or the fact that you just let me beat the shit out of you on the Hellicarrier? Or how I can’t talk for two minutes about one of my nightmares without you reminding me it isn’t my fault. What is it that you’re so afraid to talk about that you insist on forcing me to relive a past I don’t remember?!”

“Because it’s all my fucking fault!” Steve shouted, face contorted into something Bucky didn’t recognize. 

Almost instantly, Steve stopped short, the horror of what he’d said finally reaching him. His face drained of all color as he stepped back, putting more space between the two of them. Before Bucky could say anything, Steve closed his eyes and kept going. 

“You never would have stayed in the war if I wasn’t there. I knew you weren’t the same when I pulled you off that table, but I was so fucking high off being a damn hero for once, I didn’t care. I could stand up to the bullies now and win and I loved that feeling. I wanted to rip the Nazis and Hydra apart with my bare hands, and I had the strength do it.”

As if all the fight was punched out of him, Steve dropped onto the couch, shoulders slumped in an air of heartbreaking defeat.

“So I ignored the pain I saw in your eyes and convinced myself I was doing the right thing. You never wanted to fight but you always jumped in when I started one. And I wanted to pick the biggest fucking fight over there and I let you come along for the ride. Even though I knew you weren’t yourself. Even though I knew you were tired of fighting. Even though I knew you’d been fucking tortured in ways I could never imagine, I wanted you to keep going right beside me. A sick part of me liked that you were finally the weaker of the two of us.” 

Steve leaned forward, putting his head in his hands. Bucky just stood there, the force of Steve’s words hitting him. The weight of it all settled into an uncomfortably long silence between them. 

Bucky could see an angry tick playing along Steve’s jaw, hinting at the turmoil below the surface. His head was buried in his hands but Bucky could easily imagine the pained look on Steve’s face. Sighing heavily, Steve pushed on, all the anger in his voice replaced with an agony even Bucky hadn’t heard before from him. 

“And yet I still wasn’t strong enough when it counted. You say it was your hands that killed all those people? Well, my hands let you slip into Hydra’s. I see you fall almost every night and there’s nothing I can do about it. So yeah, I keep bringing up the time before the war because it’s the last time I didn’t fuck you over completely.”

“Stevie, I made the choice to stay in the war.” 

“But would you have stayed if I wasn’t there?” 

Bucky couldn’t answer that without admitting Steve was right. If it wasn’t for Steve, Bucky would have taken the honorable discharge the minute it was offered to him. He would have gone back home slightly broken from what Zola had done to him, but he would have still gone home. 

“That’s what I thought,” Steve said when Bucky was silent for a minute too long. He ran his fingers almost violently through his hair. 

“Buck, you may close your eyes and see all the people you killed while under Hydra’s control. I close my eyes and see the love of my life slipping through my hands while I had the free will to stop it. And just like you can’t shake the guilt of those deaths, I can’t shake the guilt of knowing my failure led to all the pain you’re going through now.”

Steve’s voice sounded wrecked. Like the weight of his alleged failure was choking off his ability to speak. It tore out Bucky’s heart to hear it. 

“I had no idea my way of dealing with that guilt was hurting you. But you have to know I don’t expect you to be anything but the person I see before me now, Buck. Me talking about our life before the war isn’t about wanting the old Bucky. It’s about me trying to escape the guilt I carry around too.”

Bucky gasped, truly seeing the extent of Steve’s pain for the first time. Steve often hid behind what Natasha jokingly called his “Captain America face”. If he didn’t want you to see what was going on in his head, he could shut down and pretend better than anyone Bucky ever knew. 

But sitting in front of him right now was Steve laid bare. His chest rose and fell with each ragged breath and the raw agony in his eyes cut Bucky to the quick. What had started out as Bucky raging against Steve’s perceived expectations had turned into the most honest moment in their relationship. Bucky had no idea what to do next. It was obvious Steve didn’t either because he kept looking at Bucky to say or do something. 

“Why didn’t you tell me all this before?” Bucky finally settled on. Steve let out a sad chuckle and sighed. 

“Because I didn’t want to hurt you, believe it or not.”

“Well, that failed spectacularly,” Bucky said, a tiny bit of humor making its way back to his voice. For the first time in hours, Steve genuinely laughed. 

Bucky made his way over to Steve, his moves cautious for fear he wouldn’t be welcomed. But the minute he was within reaching distance, Steve pulled Bucky towards his chest. Falling into his arms, all the emotions warring within Bucky spilled out. 

He cried for all the years they lost - the unfairness of it all washing through him. He cried because his little Stevie died the minute Bucky was shipped out. He cried because the guilt they both carried was crushing the only thing they had left - their love for each other. He didn’t realize Steve was crying too until he felt something wet on his neck. And that just made him hold on even tighter. 

Bucky wasn’t sure how long they sat there, his face buried in Steve’s neck. Eventually the tears ran dry but Steve continued to hold him, rocking them back and forth. When Bucky went to speak again, his voice came out hoarse. 

“We can’t keep doing this to each other,” he said. 

“I know,” Steve whispered into his hair, placing a light kiss on the top of his head. “Sam keeps hinting that I should see a therapist. Maybe it’s time I stop pretending I’m not getting his hints.” 

“Oh, he knows you’re getting them. He also knows you’re a stubborn ass.”

“Thanks, babe.”

“It’s all a part of this new honesty thing we’re doing,” he quipped, making Steve sigh in an exasperated but fond manner. 

Bucky pushed off of Steve’s (admittedly fabulous) chest and cupped his (admittedly gorgeous) face. He shifted forward, brushing his lips against Steve’s slightly chapped ones. It was timid at first, Bucky unsure of this new space they were suddenly occupying. But Steve, always the brave one, pulled Bucky close by the nape of his neck and turned the kiss into something more solid. When they parted, Bucky rested their foreheads together. 

“No more hiding,” Bucky said, his eyes pleading with Steve to take this tentative step towards some semblance of recovery. 

“No more hiding,” Steve promised with a resolve that finally gave Bucky a moment of peace. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [thatsmysecretduh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsmysecret/pseuds/thatsmysecret) for reviewing this before I posted it anywhere. I wrote it on my phone in less than an hour, so I'm thankful she jumped in to make sure it didn't suck!
> 
> The title is from 3 Libras by A Perfect Circle. Because Maynard James Keenan can write lyrics that will rip your heart out.


End file.
